I know you shouldn't compare your children, but how can you help it when your children are as different as night and day!?
I've always heard parents tell their children that they don't have favorites and that they love all their children the same. Now that I have two kids of my own, that phrase has held new meaning for me. I have the same amount of love for both my boys, but I don't LOVE them the same.
For instance, Tate gets the biggest smile on his face when I attack his face with kisses. He lights up when I talk to him and will "talk" back as long as I'm willing to keep the conversation going. He hates being alone and loves to snuggle!
Collin on the other hand, will only give and receive hugs and kisses when HE wants to. Even when he's hurt he just wants a quick hug and that's it. If you hold on too long he pushes away. Cuddling is a rare, and I mean rare, thing for him. He likes people and enjoys interacting with them, but he's just as happy to play alone.
Because I am a hugger and cuddler myself, I found that I was gravitating more towards Tate. I felt like I spent more time hugging and kissing on him than I did with Collin and I started to feel guilty.
Maybe that meant I loved Tate more? I didn't want that! Collin is my first baby and is irreplaceable.
It took me a while to realize that just because I love on Tate more, it doesn't mean I love him more. It just means I love him differently. If I loved on Collin as much as I love on Tate, there would be a really annoyed 2 yr old running around the house and I don't think our relationship would be as close as it is right now. :)
I love on Tate because he likes it and responds well to it. I show Collin love by doing things that he likes, like playing trains or dancing. (He's quite the dancer)
I still struggle with this daily. My natural instinct as a mother, and a hugger, is to show physical love. Sometimes I still feel like I'm a bad mom if I don't show a certain amount of physical affection.
I'm still learning that it's not important to give Collin "x" amount of hugs a day, what's important is making sure I'm there to give him that one hug when he needs it most.
Aaaaaand, this wasn't what I intended to write about at all when I sat down at my computer. I was going to write about how Tate weighs 15 pounds now! (hence the title of the post)
anyways, if you're still reading, here's the rest of the pictures from this week.
Collin became a little scientist when he helped me experiment with my Singing Time activity for Sunday. I found this cool idea online where you write the song they're learning on the board with colored chalk and then have a child come up and stir the magic potion into the jar. Whatever color the water turns, that's the color you erase on the board. Then you sing the song with the missing words. It went over really well!
Click
here for more details on how the game is played.
After Collin helped me with my experiment, I let him do his own experimenting.
I have taken down all of my Christmas stuff but have yet to put it back in the attic. Everything has been haphazardly placed in our spare room. Collin went in there the other day and dragged out his nativity set. I was somewhat hesitant because the pieces get spread all over the house and then it takes me forever to locate them again, but when I saw what he did with it my heart was softened. I love how everyone is gathered around looking at baby Jesus. Sometimes he knows more than I give him credit for :)
We went to the park earlier this week and I cracked up! Everytime Collin went down the slide his hair frizzed! This one little girl looked very concerned when she saw it. It was hilarious.
And then Collin got sick :( He ran a low grade fever for about 24 hrs. so we stayed home and did a lot of coloring.
I got so tired of trying to shove broken crayons back into the box that I decided to do the famous "crayon melt" everyone seems to be doing. Yeah, not as impressed as I thought I would be. They're big and bulky and hard to color with. But Collin loves them! He's been carrying them around ALL day! And that's the important thing right? I put the crayons in muffin tins so they wouldn't mess up my cupcake pan and they ended up looking like Reese's cups. Which is probably why Collin tried to eat it several seconds after I handed it to him :)Whoops.
And as a side note, I find it funny that, that boy can peel paper off a crayon in 10 seconds after I've just told him not to, but when I WANT him to peel the paper off he suddenly needs help every 3 seconds. Very suspicious.
Anyways, look who's lifting his head!
He army crawled off his blanket last night. No lie! He did it while face planting, but we were still pretty impressed.
